HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man who argued for a stay of sentence on the grounds of intellectual disability for the killing of a woman jogging near his Houston home more than 27 years ago was executed Wednesday night.
Arthur Lee Burton, 54, was pronounced dead at 6:47 pm local time after receiving a lethal injection at Huntsville State Prison. He was convicted of the July 1997 murder and attempted rape of Nancy Adelman, a mother of three who was then 48 years old.
Burton appeared tense as he was strapped to the gurney and his spiritual director prayed briefly over him. His right leg twitched under the white sheet that covered him from chest to foot.
“I want to thank all the people who have supported me and prayed for me,” Barton said, his voice repeatedly trembling as he took sharp breaths after a few words when asked by the warden if he wanted any final statements.
“To all those I have hurt and caused pain, I wish we were never here, and I am sorry that I put you and my family through this. I am not better than anyone, and I hope that I can find peace, and that you can find peace too.”
He nodded to his brother Michael, who was watching from a nearby window, took four breaths and appeared to yawn as a lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital took effect, then stopped moving. He was pronounced dead 24 minutes later.
Police said Adelman was severely beaten and strangled with a shoelace in a wooded area off a jogging path along the bayou. Authorities said Burton confessed to the murder, saying, “She asked me why I would do that, and why I didn’t have to do that.” He recanted the confession at his trial.
Hours before his scheduled execution, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a defense request to intervene after a lower court had rejected Burton’s request to stay the execution.
Burton’s defense team had argued that the reports of two experts and the transcripts showed that Burton “scored poorly on tests of learning, reasoning, complex idea comprehension, problem solving and suggestibility, all of which are examples of significant limitations in intellectual functioning.” They argued that the evidence strongly suggested an intellectual disability and that he was “completely exempt from the death penalty.”
But prosecutors argued that Barton had never previously claimed intellectual disability and waited until eight days before his scheduled execution to make that claim.
An expert from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Burton, said in an Aug. 1 report that they had found no evidence that Burton had significant deficiencies in intellectual or mental capacity.
“There are no mental health issues or other indications that Mr. Barton suffers from significant impairments in his intellectual or mental abilities,” said the report, written by Thomas Guilmette, a psychology professor at Providence College in Rhode Island.
The Supreme Court banned the execution of people with intellectual disabilities in 2002 but gave states some discretion in determining how to determine such disabilities.
Burton was convicted in 1998, but his death sentence was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2000. In 2002, he was sentenced to death again in a new criminal trial.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, Burton’s lawyers charged that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the intellectual disability claim out of “animosity” toward previous Supreme Court decisions that criticized the state’s rules for determining intellectual disability.
In its filing with the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office denied arguments that state appeals courts are refusing to follow current standards for determining intellectual disability.
Burton is the third inmate executed this year in Texas, which has the highest number of executions in the nation, and the 11th nationwide.
On Thursday, Taberon Dave Honey is scheduled to become the first inmate to be executed in Utah since 2010. He was on death row for the 1998 murder of his girlfriend’s mother.
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Lozano reported from Houston.
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